Integrity and Privacy Preserving Secure Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Data aggregation based on in-network processing is useful in improving the communications overhead in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) by reducing the overall number of packets communicated to the base station. However, due to the fusion of data items sourced at different nodes into a single one, the security of the aggregated data as well as that of the aggregating node, demands critical investigation. This paper observes that though there have been substantial numbers of research attempts recently in proposing techniques for secure data aggregation, there is still a need for a coherent, integrated framework for secure data aggregation. It proposes such an integrated framework for secure data aggregation in this paper. The proposed framework implements a secure data aggregation protocol, offering the attributes viz. confidentiality, privacy, authentication, robustness, as well as data integrity using a defined data aggregation topology. In addition to that, the proposed framework is based on a zero configuration protocol that supports a generation of a defined aggregation topology and a key exchange procedure. This work supports the framework with detailed security analysis and performance evaluation on TinyOS platform using TOSSIM as the base simulator. Through humble observations, this is an unique attempt that integrates the support for security features, topology generation and key management in a single, secure data aggregation protocol; substantiating the proposal with elaborate experimental evaluation, too.